“Warra, warra!” With this half-angry, half-frightened shout to “go away,” the Aborigines greeted the first fleet of British ships that ferried white convicts to colonize Australia in January 1788. The Europeans ignored the yells, and the Aborigines have suffered from negligence ever since. Now comprising only 1% of Australia’s population of 16 million, the Aborigines have become a forgotten and impoverished minority, relegated to the squalid fringes of rural towns and shabby city suburbs of a continent that once was theirs alone. “We are a captive people,” says Paul Coe, an Aboriginal leader. “We are a managed people.”
Now, just four months before the country’s bicentennial, the Aborigines have reason to hope for better times. Prime Minister Bob Hawke announced earlier this month that he was seeking a “compact” of understanding with the powerless Aborigines. “Before 1987 is finished,” said Hawke, “it would be good to have some clear acknowledgment that in the 200 years of European settlement, considerable injustice has been done to the Aboriginal people.”
Hawke presumably hoped that by holding out the promise of an agreement, he would pre-empt plans by Aboriginal activists to turn the government’s celebrations next year into a forum for their claims of racial inequality. Still, Hawke was vague about whether the compact would take the form of a new statute or a territorial treaty recognizing tribal land rights. What was important, he said, was “attitude and commitment.”
Any attention to the problems of Aborigines would be an improvement over years of neglect. The unemployment rate among Aborigines is 45%, compared with 8% for white Australians. Alcoholism and malnutrition are so rampant that the expected life span for an Aborigine man is 56, compared with 72 for a white Australian. According to Dr. Michael Gracey, a medical researcher in Perth, high levels of infection, unbalanced diets and poor hygiene are all contributing to impaired growth among Aboriginal children. Trapped in a cycle of poverty, some 200 Aborigines rioted in two Outback towns in Queensland and New South Wales this year. Two weeks ago, 40 demonstrators demanding better housing stormed a government office in the Tasmanian capital of Hobart.
Aborigines are also imprisoned at a rate 14 times as high as that for whites. In fact, the number of deaths of Aborigines while in police custody — 14 since December — is worrying the government. Last month Hawke set up a commission to look into the causes. One recent report claims that Aborigines are so used to being assaulted by police that they think it is a normal part of being arrested.
Long the victims of bigotry, some Aborigines have even expressed fears that the government’s neglect is a subtle form of genocide. Such suspicions are rooted in history: in the early 1800s, white settlers massacred Aborigines, sometimes shooting them for sport. The Aborigine population, plagued by cholera and influenza, fell from more than 300,000 in the late 18th century to about 170,000 today. At a science conference in Queensland two weeks ago, Historian Gwen Deemal-Hall alleged that the state government was injecting young Aboriginal women with a contraceptive drug to slow the growth of the indigenous population. Queensland officials denied the charge.
Hawke may have trouble translating the Aboriginal concept of property into law. As the Aborigines see it, the land is a tribal dreamscape filled with mythic ancestors and marked by legendary events. Previous governments have simply ignored these traditional claims, arguing that the nomadic Aborigines could not have a sense of landownership. Moreover, Australian businesses are not likely to give up their stakes in tribal land rich in precious metals. There is also little popular support for a compact. One poll found that 52% of white Australians consider it a “waste of time and money.” Said John Howard, leader of the opposition Liberal Party: “There is no way the Australian people will ever accept that in some way we are two nations within one — nor should they.”
The Aborigines remain skeptical of Hawke’s proposal. A treaty will take more than a year to complete, if one can be put together at all. By then the bicentennial, the Aborigines’ best opportunity to be heard, will be over. Says Rights Activist Galarrwuy Yunupingu: “We will not be satisfied with a few hurried crumbs while white Australians get the rest of the birthday cake.” That is one warning Hawke cannot ignore if he wants to be the host of a successful party.
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